Moist-a-licious Walnut, Carrot and Orange Cake

Carrot Cake. One of my all time favourite cakes. I love making this. Nearly as much as I love eating it.

I've baked carrot cake a lot over the last year or so and I have tried a number of recipes. I liked all of them for different reasons, but failed to find one that ticked all the boxes - moistness, devilish cream cheese topping, spicey flavour, fluffy but rich texture - so, I went and designed my own recipe.

"Here's one I prepared earlier" ;-)

There is nothing like a perfectly baked, slice of moist and flavoursome carrot cake. I love to have mine with a yummy cup of peppermint tea.

The Ingredients:

Cake mix -
175g light muscovado sugar
175ml sunflower oil
3 large eggs (lightly beaten)
140g grated carrots (about 3 medium ones will do!)
100g raisins
Grated zest of 1 large orange
175g self-raising flour
1 heaped tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg (freshly grated will give you the best flavour)
1 bag of whole walnut halves

Icing mix -
200g soft cheese (one standard sized tub of Philadelphia Cream Cheese does the job well) 

50g butter, softened

85g icing sugar, sifted

Pinch of ground cinnamon

The juice of half of 1 large orange

The Moozic:
The Morning Benders, Big Echo

A great sound to bake to, this will have you sauntering about the kitchen. You can check out my own little review of the album on my other blog, here

The Method:

For the cake...

• Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4/fan 160C
• Oil and line the base and sides of an 18cm square cake tin with baking parchment. I find the easiest way to do this is to cut two long strips the width of the tin and layer each strip crossways, covering the base and sides of the tin
• Tip the sugar into a large mixing bowl, pour in the oil and add the eggs. Lightly mix with a wooden spoon
• Stir in the grated carrots, raisins and orange rind
• Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices, into the bowl. Mix!
• Lightly mix all the ingredients - until everything is evenly mixed. The texture should be fairly soft and almost runny
• Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and bake for 40- 45 minutes, until it feels firm and springy when you press it in the centre
• Cool in the tin for about 5 minutes, then turn it out, peel off the paper and cool that bad boy on a wire rack

The look of concentration...

For zee icing...

• God I love this part... With an electric whisk, beat together the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and cinnamon until smooth
• Add in the orange juice and continue whisking, but only until it looks mixed in - you don't want to over-mix 
• Spread over the top of the cake with a tool similar to the one I am rocking in the picture above
• Decorate with walnut halves. You can do this whatever way you want but for ease of slicing, the way I have done mine works well
• When this is done, take the the other half of the orange you squeezed for the icing, and grate/sprinkle some zest over the cake.

Aaaaaand done! :-)

B x